We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carrie Smith Libman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carrie below.

Hi Carrie, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

I always knew I wanted to be an artist and felt academia was the best way to pursue my work while making a living. I quickly moved from one checkbox to the next: BFA, MFA, teaching experience, adjunct position. I realized I moved so quickly through all the known academic steps I had never not been in school. I didn’t know what my work looked like outside of a semester by semester critique construct or access to woodshop. I took a hard turn and left academia. I was seeking experience to be a better artist and teacher and wanted to put down roots. I moved back to my hometown of Pittsburgh and pursued what turned into a corporate path while maintaining small acts of a studio practice.

Though I was continually making in small ways, It wasn’t until I had my second child that I felt called to focus in a meaningful and significant way on my art again, for myself and my kids. It no longer felt selfish to make work, instead it felt essential and necessary. Five years later, I’ve maintained an active studio practice while welcoming a third baby and sending my oldest off to Kindergarten. I am still very early on in my parenting journey and love that my studio practice, in many ways, is the same age as my kids and growing alongside them.

It’s so easy to look around and feel like you’re behind, especially when you took a pause or pursued an alternative path. Our society celebrates speed and youth but I believe my own starts and stops have enriched my work and viewpoint. I recently sat down to write a new artist statement and realized that if I intend to make work about experiences I have to allow time to actually experience things.

I currently work in short, colorful bursts of studio time and rely on readymade materials, assemblage, and collage. This fits with my season of life and stage of motherhood. Even though my materials have changed, I see the throughlines from the work I was making in undergrad and graduate school and in small pockets of time as I navigated my late twenties. Sometimes I feel like I lost creative time in the ten years between finishing grad school and starting my current practice, but I was building other meaningful relationships that support my studio work today. As I look ahead, I love to think about what my work is going to look like as I parent pre-teens, teenagers, and send my kids out into the world. The thread is there, no matter when you start.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I live and work in my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with my husband and our three young children. Before returning to Pittsburgh, I spent time in the midwest where I received my BFA in Sculpture from Washington University in St. Louis and the southeast, where I received my MFA in Sculpture from the University of Florida and also taught Sculpture and Drawing. Part of returning to Pittsburgh for me was my love for Pittsburgh’s very active arts community. I am a member of Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Society of Sculptors, and a founding member of Flock Artist Collective, a group of local Artist/Mothers/Caretakers dedicated to showing work in the region. My work hangs in homes across the country and I love taking on a handful of commissions each year. As a compliment to my studio practice, I work in healthcare strategy. I find endless inspiration in the intersections and overlaps of my creative practice, corporate America, and motherhood.

Since becoming a mother my practice has become a direct and indirect collaboration with my children. I document their growth alongside my own from my basement studio and our kitchen table, each piece a study in chaos and control. I make both two-dimensional work meant to hang on a wall and freestanding sculptural objects. My work is bright in color and largely joyful and layered. In my studio I collage cut and torn images onto painted panels, forming and revealing window panes, grids, houseplants, and florals, my visual vocabulary for these early years of motherhood. The pieces are worked back into with paint sticks, pencil, and crayon, a blend of my own studio supplies and my children’s. The mix of free and measured marks is a nod to the domestic push and pull, creating textured and materially rich surfaces. The work becomes an artifact of these first few years of holding tight and letting go, of learning when to lead and when to follow.

My goal is to create work that resonates with a viewer because they see a sliver of their own lived experience in my capture of mine. I want my work to make the viewer feel heard and understood so that when it hangs in their home it reminds them each time they pass it of a joyous moment, intimate relationship, or season in life.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I mentioned earlier our societal preference for speed and youth over experience and community. Being a creative can often be an isolating endeavor. Community and connection are essential. Moreso, to create a thriving creative ecosystem we need to collectively say out loud that having a thriving creative ecosystem is something we value as a society, followed by concrete actions like paid leave, funding, childcare, art in schools, art in public spaces, access, and transparency. It’s not a competition, everyone wins when we prioritize community.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

There are two things I find incredibly rewarding about being an artist. The first is the ability to translate what I am seeing, thinking, and feeling into something tangible with my hands. The pure act of making, building up and peeling back layers, and every so often finding a flow state in my studio, is magic. The second piece is hopefully modeling for my kids that it’s possible and important to pursue your passion, whatever that might be.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.smithlibman.com/
• Instagram: @smithlibman

Image Credits

Michael Will Photography